Andy Pring

Andy is a freelance consultant specialising in community engagement and delivering Prevent training to multi-agency staff. From 2007-11, he managed the interfaith Prevent youth project, and then being appointed as a senior Prevent manager at Wandsworth Borough Council commissioning their Prevent projects from 2011-2014, and facilitating the Council’s Channel panel. He also worked closely with the Home Office’s Office for Security and Counter Terrorism team.

Andy has completed a Masters of Philosophy degree in Islamic Studies from the University of Birmingham, which included a fourteen month period of field research in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. He has a BA (Hons) in Theology from the University of Birmingham. He has travelled extensively in the Middle East and has also conducted research trips in Iraq and Pakistan.

9/11: The Al Qaeda attacks on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington on 11th September 2001, which triggered President George W Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ and the  wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

7/7: The co-ordinated bomb attacks on London by four young British men in the name of Al Qaeda, on 7th July 2005, which killed 52 people.

Al Qaeda: Terrorist group founded in 1988 by Osama Bin Laden, which committed the 9/11 attacks.

Islamic State (Daesh/IS/ISIS/ISIL): Terrorist group formed after the fall of Saddam Hussain in Iraq and the civil war in Syria. It is the most prominent recruiter of Westerners to its mission to establish its own state.

CONTEST & the ‘4 Ps’: The British Government’s Counter Terrorism strategy initiated in 2006, revised in 2011, consisting of 4 strands: Prepare, Protect, Prevent and Pursue.

Prevent: Aiming to stop (prevent) individuals from supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists.